


The Aerodrome and Beyond

by AlexElizabeth



Category: Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexElizabeth/pseuds/AlexElizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petrova wants to fly, but she also wants her name in history books. A study on her life before, during, and after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aerodrome and Beyond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



When Petrova Fossil was twelve years old, she did not have very big plans for her life. Petrova wanted to learn to fly, and she wanted to do something to put her name into history books in order to fulfill the vow she had made with Pauline and Posy.

The learning to fly part was easy, and a pure joy. As Gum had promised, he found a flat near an aerodrome for them to live in, and Petrova settled in quite nicely with Gum and Cook and Clara for company. She missed Pauline and Posy and Garnie and Nana, but not as much as she would have if she had not been so happily engaged in her own interests.

If Petrova missed anyone at all, it was Doctor Smith. Doctor Jakes was a good friend and had spent many hours coaching Petrova on Shakespeare, but it was the loss of Doctor Smith and her mathematics coaching that really hurt. Petrova felt it like a sore tooth, stabbing sometimes when she least expected it. The school she went to after she moved to the flat with Gum was perfectly satisfactory, but a perfectly satisfactory education at a respectable school is very different from receiving personal instruction from a highly qualified academic coach. 

So Petrova wrote to Doctor Smith and told her how much she missed her, and Doctor Smith sent a package back with a kind letter and, more practically, a lovely book of algebraic equations. Petrova was very pleased. Kind letters were all very well, but the book was practical and helped solve the problem. Petrova liked things that solved problems rather than only making you feel better.

When Petrova was seventeen years old, she passed her exams easily and was finished with school. Gum did not pay very much attention to Petrova’s affairs except when it came to her flying, so when she told him that she had received top marks for her subjects, taking first of her school in maths, he smiled vaguely and said, “Well that’s splendid. And how close are you to your license?”

Petrova was very close to her license. A month after she finished with school, she earned her flying license. Gum was delighted. He took her out to a very posh restaurant to celebrate, telling her that now she was done with the fuss of school and training, she would have time to really devote to her craft.

But there was less time to devote to flying than Petrova would have liked. It was a very busy year for her the year she was seventeen, because just after she finished with school and getting her license, the war broke out. That changed things very much at the aerodrome where Petrova spent so much of her time. With most of the men called away to join the RAF, Petrova was offered the job of mechanic at the aerodrome. She accepted with eagerness, but what she really wanted to do was to fly.

 

The worst disappointment of Petrova Fossil’s life came when she was turned down to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary during the war. She was too young in 1941 when women first started flying military planes over England, because applicants had to be twenty years old to join the ATA. Petrova bided her time, working on the civilian biplanes at the aerodrome and counting the days, and when she turned twenty she sent in her application. In response, she got a letter in the mail telling her thank you very much but they had enough woman pilots at the moment. 

She showed the letter to Gum, and was ashamed to be wiping away tears in front of him. Gum, who never seemed to age very much despite being quite old by the time the war broke out, shook his head of gray hair and patted her on the shoulder. “If I can’t change something you’d better accept it,” he said.

“But this would have been my chance,” Petrova said, sniffing loudly, “to do something really noteworthy.” She did not tell Gum about her vow with Pauline and Posy to get their name into the history books, and how the responsibility of that sometimes rested like a weight on her shoulders. She blew her nose and added, “I’ve had my pilot’s license for ages now. I don’t see why they won’t take me.”

“There’s other things you can do to help with the war,” Gum said. “Go drive an ambulance.”

So Petrova drove an ambulance in London during the war. But she would rather have been flying aeroplanes. In her free time when she was not on duty to drive or to work at the aerodrome, she studied the warplanes she had hoped to be allowed to fly. 

Fighter planes were, naturally, the most popular topic of conversation at the aerodrome. There were not many people at the aerodrome while the war was underway, but she had a friend, a man her own age who had qualified for his license at the same time as she had. He wanted to fly fighter planes as much as she did, but he had badly injured his knee before the start of the war and so he had not been allowed to join the RAF.

His name was Bill, and he worked as a mechanic alongside Petrova. Petrova very much enjoyed discussing aeroplanes with Bill. Petrova was a firm supporter of the Thunderbolt and Bill held an inexplicable fondness for the Spitfire, so they had many spirited discussions over cups of tea while sitting around the radio, with their booted feet propped on the table and the kettle singing on the gas ring.

Her friendship with Bill helped make her feel less lonesome most days. It wasn’t that she was lonely, precisely, except that Gum was not the sort of person one could really confide in. Pauline and Posy were faithful with their correspondence—Pauline more so than Posy, whose letters were enthusiastic but sporadic—but writing a letter is not the same thing as seeing someone in person. Sometimes Petrova ached quite badly for the sensible advice of Doctor Smith or Mr. Simpson, but they had both left London, Doctor Smith to retire in the countryside and Mr. Simpson joining the Army for the war.

So Bill was a comfort to Petrova. He was amiable and intelligent, an excellent combination in Petrova’s estimation. She liked that he looked her in the eye and that he took her seriously when she was talking about aeroplanes or cars or boats, or Nazi strategy across Europe. He never told her that her opinion didn’t matter or that she had her facts wrong just because she was a woman. 

Petrova felt very fond of Bill and she thought he was fond of her as well. But it had not occurred to her that Bill might have a different sort of fondness for her.

One afternoon they were sitting in the small office at the aerodrome, having their usual cup of tea before it was time to go home ahead of the blackout. Petrova had said something rather heated about the angle of the propeller blades on the Spitfire, and when Bill did not respond, she looked up and found him with a strange expression on his face.

“Look,” he said quickly, his face going very red, “I can’t not say this anymore. I meant to wait until after the war, but what’s the point of that? Petrova, you’re wonderful. You’re simply wonderful. If you would do me the very great honour—”

Horrified, Petrova swung her boots off the table and scrambled to her feet. “Bill, please—”

But it was too late. Bill forged ahead with a very determined, very embarrassed proposal of marriage, which he ended by drawing Petrova into a fervent embrace. 

“No!” Petrova said, disentangling herself from his arms. “Bill, no. I don’t want to kiss you and I’ve never considered marrying you and I don’t think I can.”

She lost Bill as a friend after that, and it was the second big disappointment of her life. Less than a month later Bill told her he was moving back to Shropshire. His mother lived there, he explained, and it was safer there than braving the Luftwaffe in London. Petrova nodded her head and wished him well. That was the last she saw of him.

 

It hurt, having Bill gone. Petrova wrote to Pauline and Posy. She thought about writing it up in a funny way—she could have managed it—but instead she decided to be truthful. It was not the same thing as talking to them in person, but it helped to remember that someone cared. It was not the sort of thing she could talk to Gum about. 

Posy wrote from America to express condolences. Posy lived in New York City. Her residence in Czechoslovakia had been brief; when the Nazis began moving in, Manoff had moved out and taken his ballet troupe to America. Nana had said that this was far too much travel and trouble for any person, and if they did not settle down in New York then she, Nana, would leave Posy to her own devices. 

Of course Nana did not leave Posy all alone in America, but she could have quite well, because Posy did not need much taking care of. By the time Petrova had been applying to join the ATA, Posy had all but taken up residence with one of the principal dancers in Manoff’s troupe, a French man named Jean-Pierre. Petrova was rather shocked when Posy first wrote of her casual attachment to him, but since Posy praised both his dancing and his kindness, Petrova concluded that Posy would be very happy with him. According to Posy’s letters, Nana remained blissfully unaware that Posy’s long evenings of practice with Jean-Pierre might include something more than dancing, and Posy begged Petrova not to let loose her secret.

Posy, happily engaged in work that inspired her with a man who shared her interests, advised Petrova to find another pilot and see if Petrova felt more romantic about him than she had done about Bill. Petrova wrote back thanking Posy for this advice but explaining she did not think she would have much luck just walking up to any old RAF officer and seeing if he wanted to respect her views as a woman and a fellow pilot.

Pauline also wrote with sympathy, but she did not offer advice. Pauline did not have a boyfriend, but she had a very close friend named Maggie, who made costumes for films. From Pauline’s brief but poignant paragraphs, Petrova suspected that Pauline’s friendship with Maggie might have been such that Nana certainly should not be told about it. Sylvia, rather to Petrova’s surprise, seemed to be taking Maggie in stride. 

After she received Pauline’s letter, Petrova started to wonder about herself. Petrova had a casual friend named Mary, a young woman who worked as a secretary at the War Office in Whitehall. Mary had invited Petrova out one night and Petrova had turned her down as quickly as she turned down Bill. But Petrova was a firm believer that every theory must be tested before it can be disproved, and so she set out to disprove her theory. She telephoned Mary and asked if perhaps Mary would like to get a drink one night.

“Yes, of course,” Mary’s voice said on the other end of the line. “There’s a delicious little club in Soho if you’d like to meet there.”

Petrova was not sure that she wanted to meet Mary in Soho, but she took the tube and found the club Mary had told her about. Mary was already there, wearing a primrose-coloured dress and sipping a cocktail. 

Petrova let Mary buy her a cocktail, and then a second cocktail, and then she let Mary pull her into a corner.

Kissing Mary was not bad, but it didn’t make Petrova feel any differently than she had felt when she was kissing Bill. She went home that night feeling depressed. Happily, Mary did not seem to mind being turned down, and at least, Petrova concluded, she did not have to lose another friend.

 

The third disappointment in Petrova’s life came when the war ended. Petrova was glad to give up the grisly work of ambulance driving and she had a vague thought of perhaps becoming a flight instructor at the aerodrome once the war was over. But when the staff swelled at the aerodrome after the men were decommissioned from the RAF, the man who ran the aerodrome called Petrova to his office and told her she was not needed at the aerodrome any longer. She was welcome to pay membership dues and use the facilities to fly on her personal time, but they did not have a job for her any longer, not even as a mechanic and certainly not as an instructor.

Petrova went home to Gum and this time she did not cry. She was very angry. She threw her gloves across the sitting room, narrowly avoiding the teapot, and used some words she had never said in front of Gum before.

Gum was not philosophical this time. He shared Petrova’s anger and he let it show. “It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s plain wrong. You’ll just have to work twice as hard and show them what they’ve lost.”

“But how?” Petrova demanded. “I can go to another aerodrome, but won’t they just as likely tell me the same thing? Everyone wants to give the men jobs because they’ve come home from the war. Of course they need jobs, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a job as well.”

“Go out and make your own job,” Gum retorted. “It’s not fair you should have to, but going out and facing the world on your own terms is cracking good fun, too.”

Petrova thought what Gum probably had in mind was that she should open her own flight school. But that night, as she lay sleepless in her bed turning Gum’s words over in her mind, her thoughts drifted further back. 

She thought about Mr. Simpson, opening the bonnet of his motorcar to show her the workings of a Citroën before he had even learned her name. She thought about Doctor Smith, teaching her higher-order mathematics, preparing her for stringent examinations that she had never taken. She thought about her conversations with Bill, debating the millimetres of the ailerons on the Spitfire. She thought about Pauline and Posy, faithfully vowing every birthday to do whatever they could do to put Petrova’s name into history books. 

The next morning, she looked at Gum over the breakfast table and said, “I’m never going to do something really interesting with my life if I teach flying to other people. Flying is wonderful. But there’s more to flight than flying.” She twisted her teacup around in her hands. “Did you go to university, Gum?”

“Yes,” he said. “I went to Oxford. I earned a First in archaeology.”

“It’s difficult, I imagine,” Petrova said, her eyes still on her teacup. “Getting into Oxford, I mean?”

“Not hard for someone who knows what she’s doing,” Gum said, buttering his toast. “I could write you a letter of recommendation.” He gave her his most charming smile. “I’m quite good at writing letters when I put my mind to it. I imagine Doctor Smith would write one, too. What did you have in mind? Engineering?”

“Yes,” Petrova said, setting down her teacup with a clatter into the saucer. “I think I had better. Because fixing and flying aeroplanes is wonderful, but I think creating them would be better in the long run.”

 

The biggest achievement of Petrova’s life came when she graduated from Oxford in 1950 and signed a contract to work for the Bristol Aeroplane Company as the first female engineer employed to work on the design and development of aeroplane engines.

Posy wrote a letter of congratulations, full of exclamation marks and misspelled words.

“Thank you for putting us into the history books STOP,” cabled Pauline. “I knew you would do it but I didn’t think so soon STOP.”

Petrova saved Posy’s letter and Pauline’s telegram. They made her feel nicer than any embrace from Bill or Mary. They made her feel almost as good as she felt when she was working out equations involving jet fuel and combustion engines. Feeling this happy was almost like flying with her feet still on the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken liberties with generally recognized canon and possibly with timelines. I believe in Theatre Shoes Petrova is said to be flying for the ATA, but I wanted to do something a little different with this story. I am not a historian, but I have tried to get my facts right regarding the role of women in Britain during WWII and also generally at what ages one could earn a pilot's license, a general education degree, and an Oxford degree. Please feel free to offer corrections if I've made errors. For the purposes of this story, I have set Petrova's birth year as approximately 1923. 
> 
> I've never read much Ballet Shoes fic and I was delighted to delve into some of the AO3 offerings after I posted this story. I would like to make a special note to Deepdarkwaters for her really lovely story The Melody Haunts My Reverie. My apologies for using the same general themes in my story as what you have already covered in your own work (the ATA, the aerodrome, exploration of sexuality, a focus on engineering after the war). The similarities were unintentional, and I hope you enjoy my gift to you.


End file.
